strange musings of a distracted spunk

An old college friend messaged me tonight and said, “DS. You’ve always been good at giving unbiased advice, and you understand relationships better than anyone else I know.”

I laughed, but then I thought about it. And realized that there are three very distinct people who have been using me for relationship advice in the last few days, outside of the usual folk. And this is not the first time I have found myself giving advice to people I don’t consider my closest friends. Did I unwittingly pass a relationship advice dispenser test? How would such a test even work? I’m imagining walking a yellow line with a spoon balanced on my nose; for this sort of test must be completely arbitrary and random. For the record, I would most successfully fail. Nor can I really answer what makes a relationship work, other than to say, “My grandparents knew each other for six weeks before they got married and they’re still together 53 years later.”

For that matter, why do I come across as unbiased? I’m quite biased. I’ve determined that I like contrary, obstinate asses. I’ve determined that I can only sunburn in patches; today gave me a jigsaw puzzle of a sunburn. Which later migrated, so I have a more complete puzzle of a burn.

I am no longer split in halves; at least not physically. I’ve determined that the universe likes to do what it may with me, and I’m just a merry pawn on its game of life. Yet I still wonder, what qualifies me to advise others in the fair matters of the heart? How do you be there for a friend whose mother is dying when he’s sick of hearing “Is there anything I can do? I’m so sorry.” Can a hug or a blown kiss make everything feel better? We’re not the same four year old children anymore, who when mommy kissed the boo-boo on our knee felt better. The band-aid is just that. A band-aid.

We rip them off, thinking less pain now is better but have we even given the wound time to heal? I can’t profess to understand the dynamics of relationships any better than anyone else. I’ve been on a perpetual merry-go-round of my own for a year and a half, and where logic should hold true, it fails in the face of “Well. He makes fun of me when I bang my elbow.” All I can do for myself and anyone else is say, “Be honest. If you’re in love with her and think it’s going to blur the lines of how you treat your friendship, clear the air. If you’re not sure you want to marry her, should you really have moved in with her when you know she’s waiting for a ring? If he hasn’t gotten in touch with you by now, it’s not very likely that he’s going to.” Maybe, it’s just the act of listening, letting someone think the pockets of their brains out that lets them slowly piece their feelings together. Does that qualify me as Oprah then?

I don’t sugarcoat. It’s both a blessing and a curse, and has gotten me in trouble many times. I don’t know what makes a proper relationship work. I can sit in the kitchen and watch my grandfather make his coffee while my grandmother prepares dinner for that evening, but I won’t see the inexplicable magic that lies beneath after 53 years together. I can agree that someone sounds wonderful, but ask, then why are you running away? I ask myself why people value my “unbiased” judgment so much when it seems all I do is make judgments about what I perceive as the truth they don’t see.

Are we ever truly unbiased? Can we come closer to finding the truth out when someone else has to make it clear for us? Or do we shade our own beliefs with those of the people whose opinions we trust the most, losing our own truths along the way?

I can play devil’s advocate. I can listen like nobody’s business. But I can’t give out relationship advice when I myself have been so blind to my own.

Ready for a secret?

Normally, I’m pretty happy with my body image. Normally, I like how my boobs snugly fit a bikini top and how my bermuda shorts ride low on my hips and make me feel sexy. I knew that even if I put on a pair of jeans with a sweatshirt, I would still get looks as I walked down the street, because I am pretty cute. But lately, over the last few weeks, I’ve become victim to self-hatred towards my body.

Perhaps I should start from the beginning. As an overactive, skinny stick who danced five days a week, the biggest complaint I often had was my butt was too bony. It hurt to sit on the ground and other people’s laps. Almost twenty years later, I still have that complaint, but the rest of me has rounded out. I chalk it up to puberty and events in my life that happened when I was seventeen. I didn’t realize how much weight I had gained until post-college, when I was almost thirty pounds heavier than I was when I had entered.

The thing about my body is, I’m not petite and I’m not small boned. I have shoulders; broad ones. They look great in halter tops and spaghetti straps, but they will never look delicate. I’ve got curves, hips that jut out but my stomach tends to be pretty flat; I rock a four-pack pretty easily. I most definitely do not have an ass, but I more than make up for it in the chest region. My legs are muscular; maybe not as muscular as they were when I danced, but my calf muscles are still pretty huge. I’ve been mistaken for a soccer player numerous times.

When everything went down with D last year, I couldn’t figure out how to move out of the zombie phase. One day, a friend suggested I go to the gym with her. I was never a good gym-goer; I felt it was too isolated and too machine oriented. But something clicked that day, and suddenly, I started hitting the gym three, four, five times a week. I would go at the end of my day, after work and class, getting home close to midnight. I felt good about myself, and it showed. The weight I gained in college melted away, and I found myself gravitating towards more feminine clothes, something my high-school and college-self rarely did. But more importantly, I wasn’t mourning the loss of D anymore. I was redirecting my energy to a place where I didn’t have to think, where I could just move and somehow, that blank slate let me move forward.

I struggled a bit when I first moved to California. Living in a strange house where I couldn’t make food or bring home food meant I ate out a lot. And cheaply. When you were only making 800 bucks a month (thanks AmeriCorps!), gourmet meals are not exactly an option. But when I found my apartment, I got back into the rhythm; of cardio, pilates, then weights. I would be at the gym for an hour and a half to two hours, and I felt solid. Comfortable. It helped that a boy loved me, inside and out, even when he was 1800 miles away. For some reason, having someone who thought I was impossibly sexy somehow made me feel even more sexy, which was never a term I would have applied to myself until he came along.

When he and I broke up for the first time in December, I lost the motivation to go to the gym. Sneaks of depression would slither in, and all I wanted to do was go home, curl up in my bed, and zone out with a book or a movie. I didn’t want to think. I was afraid to think, because unlike D, GDB would somehow crawl into the furthest recesses of my mind, even when I was running at top speeds on the elliptical. I wasn’t willing to cry in front of other people at the gym. So I hid from it all at home, where no one could see me cry.

I struggled with my body and him for the next few months. He and I were so up and down, he infiltrated my thoughts so often, I thought it best to find as many distractions as I could. I would go to the gym, but it would only be a half-hearted effort. Finally, when I walked away in March, I started to feel good about myself again. I struggled with how my body had grown softer, but I wasn’t afraid of facing my innermost thoughts at the gym anymore. I still felt sexy, even when it wasn’t GDB who left me messages every day, as much as it was Rebound Boy. I was back in a rhythm. I liked myself and my body.

Of course, that’s when the world shifted again. Remember when I got fired? And had to deal with an asshat of a roommate? And GDB came back? And oh yeah. I traveled for a month and a half. Oh right. And broke up with GDB for good. All in the last two months. Yeah. I’m still recovering from that.

So I’ve taken solace on my parents’ couch, in my bed, eating their food, most of which is not what I would keep in my own house. I’ve seen pictures of myself from Thailand compared to pictures of myself from this past weekend, and something feels wrong. My clothes don’t feel right. My body feels strange and bigger than usual. I don’t feel sexy, at all. I don’t even really feel attractive. I’m putting on my more masculine clothes, hiding my body again, because I’m not happy with my body as it is anymore.

I won’t say pounds because I try not to go by pounds as much as I try to go by how my clothes feel, but I do want to get back to where my body was. Where I felt tight and fit, where I wasn’t afraid to wear my more feminine clothes because I felt pretty and light, and mainly, where I felt damn sexy. Part of me wonders if it’s because I’ve finally ended something where I felt like the most insanely attractive thing in the world in GDB’s eyes, and am I not able to see myself in that same light? I honestly can’t answer that today. For the first time in a long time, I am taking a break from relationships (if you haven’t heard Alanis Morrissette’s “Moratorium,” I suggest you download it now), from positive reinforcement from guys I find attractive, and from feeling like I have someone I want to dress up for.

I want to dress up for me. But more importantly, I want to feel like I CAN dress up for me, when I am back to being comfortable in my own skin. I want to shed the weight I’ve gained in the last two and a half weeks of being home. I want to remember what it was like to walk down the street and turn heads. I’m not there yet. But hopefully, even though my routine is at best a joke, at worst, a pretense, I’ll get there again.

The thing about being me is I don’t exactly fit into the hearing world. But I don’t exactly fit into the deaf world either. I don’t pay attention to hands moving, unless it’s to accentuate the shapes their mouths make. But I can’t turn around and hold a full-fledged conversation with someone standing behind me either. My version of hearing involves context clues, lip-reading, and making the most of my hearing aid. It’s in this way that I often pass for hearing.

But I cringe every time I hear someone speak in a deaf voice, their words sounding out what it should look like, rather than what it sounds like. The whining tones annoy me, irrationally, because I would sound like that too if it weren’t for modern inventions.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever know what really happened. My mother’s side says I was born deaf. My father’s side says I had an ear infection and lost my hearing. Neither side accounts for my ability to speak as clearly as I do, with the exception of an s, z, x, and ch. It’s pretty difficult to repeat sounds you can’t hear; after a while, between the fast speaking and the overactive brain, my language can get sloppy. I can pronounce the hiss of an ’s’, but more often, it sounds like a ‘th’ because I simply don’t care enough to focus on bringing my teeth together. I can pronounce the choppiness of a ‘ch’, but that requires moving my tongue to the back of my mouth, when I could just leave it behind my teeth for a ’sh.’

My kind of hearing works for me. I can take my hearing aid out when I’m tired of hearing the world, when I’m tired of hearing just how much noise there is, when I just want to curl up with a book and read and rely on my visual sense and imagination instead.

But then, my kind of hearing was challenged. Mysteriously, randomly, some of the nerves in my cochlear wiped out, and took approximately 30 decibels of sound that I previously had had with them. For someone who was only operating at about 27%, 30 decibels is a lot to lose. I was suddenly plunged from severe to profound, the last label before you fall off the cliff into total silence. I wanted it back. My hearing aid was no longer powerful enough; I had to adapt. Certain sounds got lost. I used to be able to hear most birds chirping with my hearing aid. I couldn’t anymore. I used to be able to hear crickets and sopranos hitting the highest notes. I couldn’t anymore. My speech patterns changed; they became sloppier. I couldn’t have a conversation with someone standing behind me as easily anymore; I needed to really focus on lip reading to understand the words tossed my way.

When I had lunch with my childhood best friend a year ago, she immediately noticed the difference. She said, “You sound a bit different. And you never had to pay this much attention to me when we were younger.” It was startling, but acute the way she so accurately diagnosed the changes.

I had the opportunity to recoup my losses. Still do, in fact. When those 30 decibels wandered away, I became an unlikely but eligible candidate for a cochlear implant; a device that for all intents and purposes recreates the cochlear and electromagnetically works to simulate sound in your ear.I was warned that I heard so abnormally well with my hearing aid that I may never reach that same stage with my cochlear implant.

It didn’t matter, I said. I’m impulsive at best, brash at worst. Just give me the implant, I said. I was afraid of not being able to communicate anymore, of losing the grip I had on the hearing world, of my connection to my family and friends. Who would hire me if I couldn’t hear anymore? What would I do? I took so much for granted, the idea of not having any hearing at all scared me out of my wits.

So I had the surgery. I woke up with a sore neck from my head being turned all the way to the left so they could operate on my right ear. I missed the American Idol finale where Ruben Studdard beat out Clay Aiken, which I thought was a travesty. I was knocked out by pills, though I don’t remember being in much pain. Just feeling the scar behind my ear, where they had sliced open my head to relieve pressure on my ear. I can still feel it sometimes, a line behind my ear, though no such line exists anymore.

A month later, they turned the implant on for the first time. And for the first time in twelve years (as I had flushed my hearing aid for the right ear down the toilet accidentally on purpose when I was seven), there was sound filtering through my right ear. It didn’t sound like much. White noise, maybe. But it was sound, nonetheless, where there hadn’t been sound before. Suddenly, I was faced with the reality of it all. There was sound coming from my right ear, while my left ear kept disappearing. There was sound coming from my right ear, but my brain was so unprepared, I had a sudden headache. How do you retrain your brain to hear? To translate the signals sent from false nerves from the ear that had previously been as useful as an appendix.

I would take my hearing aid out and listen to music with my cochlear implant on. I could pick out the rhythms, the bass, but how much of that was from memory and how much of that was from actual sound? Suddenly, I was faced with my worst fear. It wasn’t about losing my hearing. I had done that. I could handle that. But what if this implant, with my hearing aid, showed me all the sounds I didn’t know existed before? It’s a bit like telling a full man he’s still hungry. How can you know he’s hungry if he feels full? I felt that I had all the sound in the world that I needed. I could hear my cats purr, I could dance along to the beat, I could even listen to the quiet still of a summer night at my parents’ camper. Was I ready to recategorize the world, when I thought I had it already carefully labeled?

So I put the cochlear implant down. Five years later, I’ve only touched it here and there. The magnet in my head is a party trick, to stick refrigerator magnets on and joke about how I’m the most electronic of all my friends. Until last night, when I watched a documentary about a couple who decide to get cochlear implants at the age of sixty five years. Sixty five years of never hearing sound, and they’re willing to trade all that to hear what the rest of the world can. Was it easy? No. Is it ever easy?

But I wonder. What am I so afraid of? Even as I write this, I still can’t summon the courage to take out the cochlear implant and tuck it behind my ear. What would have to change for me to accept it? Am I waiting for more decibels to drop, to lose my hearing for good? Am I waiting for some sort of sign, that I’m ready to hear again, if I’ve ever heard before? Or am I just really…a fucking coward? Who will let her fears of not knowing the world as it was anymore override her fears of never hearing again?

The trouble with my kind of deaf is you don’t really fit in either category. You hear but you don’t. You reject the deaf community outright, but you don’t exactly fit into the hearing one either. Is it time to make a change?

To whom it may concern:

I’d like to submit my resume for the (insert title here) position at (insert company here). I’m not going to give you a song and dance routine about how especially skilled I am, as evident by my previous positions in publishing, higher education, and non-profits. I’m qualified. I’ve got a brain and I’ve performed a number of duties in my professional and collegiate careers that make me the perfect candidate for your position. I will put all of my energy (and I’ve got plenty) into my job, especially if it’s one that challenges me. I realize that there will be some quiet days, just like I realize there will be some busy days. As long as there’s work to be done and it challenges me at least 80% of the time, this will be a beautiful collaboration.

My weaknesses? I gravitate towards the higher-brain activity type of work. Filing and copying are necessities in any business, as is updating databases. For the right job, I’ll happily do that, as long as I get to do other things too. Please don’t draw me in with promises or misrepresentations of the job responsibilities; I’ve been there twice and nothing hurts worst than hating a job you were once so passionate about.

I’ll be honest; I can be fickle. But if the company keeps growing and matches my growth, then I’ll stay with you till the end of my career. My strengths? Energy and enthusiasm, of course. But I’m also wickedly expert at taking constructive criticism and changing my behavior to become a more effective employee. It’s a challenge, and anything that challenges me interests me. I’m detail-oriented, time-conscientious, great at communicating, skilled in event planning and management, and a nifty writer; two published pieces under my belt are just the beginning.

I work hard. I don’t believe that a job should be your life, but I believe life is better when you love your job. I want to love my job. I want that job to be with (insert company here). Let’s discuss what I can do for you.

Sincerely,

distracted spunk.

For the last few months, I’ve been walking a precarious tightrope. The thing about tightropes is you know there’s a chance you’re going to fall and break something. But you do it anyway. I walked it because love was on the other side. But love can only take you so far. You can mean it, you can want it, you can live and breathe it; but sometimes, it’s just not enough.

Today, not enough came through. So I took my first step off that tightrope. The ladder may shake and quiver under me, but with each step, I’ll come closer to solid ground. It was nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. Or perhaps it had everything to do with him and nothing to do with me. Quite simply, I want more.

I want love, the kind where you breathe each other’s name every time you exhale. The kind where hearing the other person’s laugh sends shivers up your spine, like it did the first time, and like it will each and every last time. The kind where life may come and go, but your hand is still there for the taking, no matter what happens.

I want the kind of love where it’s not about who loves who more, but how can you love me any more than you already do? I want the kind of love where his hurt becomes my hurt and my hurt becomes his. I want his heart to become my heart and my heart to become his. I want to experience every elation, every sadness, every quixotic moment in bliss because it is what life is made of.

I want to know that I’m the first thing he wants when he wakes up, and the last thing he wants when he goes to bed. I want to know that when he looks at me, he doesn’t see if, he sees when. I want to know that when I finally let him in and am ready for the next step, he will already be waiting for me on the last. I want recklessness, impulsiveness, silliness, because I am worth all of it and more. I want him to buy that damn plane ticket. I want him to want the world for me and the milky way too.

I want him to distract me with laughter when my family hurts me. I want him to brush aside his own work when I need to be handled with care. I want him to yell at me and snap me out of my brain, reminding me to live in this life, here, with him. I want to argue with him, passionately, exquisitely, until we’re out of breath and logic is rendered useless. I want sex, hours of sex and love mingled together, tracing lines on each other’s bodies, finding each freckle and errant hair and the scar from when I fell off a seesaw when I was four.

I want love. The good and the bad, the pain and the joy, the explosion that will occur when I find the one who is meant for me, who will love me with as many atoms as I love him. I apologize in advance if we send the universe out of orbit, but my love is too much for only me.

I want love. I’ve had it before. I’ve seen what it can do and how it makes me feel. I can say it now. Love. Love. I’m ready for you.

I went all the way to Vancouver, Canada to get hooked on American Gladiators.

No, really! While Princess Pointful made a yummy dinner, her boyfriend and I debated what to watch on TV. “The Big Bang Theory?” I said.

“Nah.”

“Dancing With the Stars?”

*dirty look*

“Ugh, Punchline is on.”

“What’s that about?”

“Sally Field and Tom Hanks.”

“Oh god no. I can’t stand Sally Field. Let’s watch American Gladiators!”

I gave him a look. “Seriously?”

“It’s good. You’ll like it. They’re crazy.”

Twenty minutes later, I was yelling at the television like a mad woman. “Watch out for Helga! Why is it so difficult for them to swim the entire length of the pool? Do the breaststroke, it’s faster! What are you doing?! He’s going to crush you! What’s the Wolf? Oh. That’s the Wolf. Ewwww.”

American Gladiators was one of those shows that was cool to watch on Saturday early afternoons, after Saved By the Bell because those people were crazy and scary, and also, it was the impetus for Guts on Nickelodeon. When it went off the air all those years ago, I never thought much of it, even when it returned. But now that I’m in Canada? I actually turned down an opportunity to go out with some of Princess Pointful’s friends because I wanted to watch Major Pain try to get past freaking Helga. (Incidentally, Helga looks like a two hundred and five pound version of a girl I went to high school with.) I was so involved with the show, I couldn’t even keep up with the conversation, because there was a former Para-Olympics medalist with one leg trying to succeed on the Eliminator. (On a side note, hand pedals? What demon conjured up that torture trap?)

As I got more involved with American Gladiators and the plight of one John Siciliano who only has the one leg, so did the others in the living room. And as we watched him try to keep his balance on a tightrope, or run down a spinning barrel, or climb up arm first on a teeter-totter rather than run up, it began to feel a bit like you couldn’t look away. But as he persevered, I realized, had I been him, I would have been pissed to know people were aww’ing every time I succeeded at doing something I had initially set out to do.

The guy who did win, after three minutes and twenty seconds did a great job, but he was ignored in favor of the human interest story of the guy who was disabled and still playing the game. The crowd began chanting, “Go John, go!” and you could see the looks on people’s faces as though they wanted to see him succeed but every time his prosthetic leg went wayward, they’d grimace. Hell, even I grimaced, because I wanted to see this guy kick Gladiator ass.

The camera stayed focused on John, zooming in to show his awkward gait because much of his weight had to be stored on one leg, regardless of the black prosthesis attached to him. It began to feel like an exploitation of his disability, rather than a genuine portrait of giving a guy a fair shot. At the end of it all, while people cheered, I was frustrated. I saw parallels in how people played up the inspirational aspects of his activity to how people have suggested I am an inspiration. I don’t think most people set out to be an inspiration. In my case, I lost my ears and did what I had to do. I don’t find anything about that inspirational.

I doubt John feels differently; in an interview at the end, he said, “If you want to do something, get up and do it.” There’s nothing heroic or poignant about that. Nike’s been riding on the “Just Do It” slogan for as long as I can remember. It’s not about setting an example. It’s about achieving goals. Why are we so eager to confuse the two when it involves someone making do with the hand they’ve been dealt? When sympathy and encouragement often walk the same line of a disability, it’s harder to be thought of as an inspiration for just living our lives.

And to think. All this came from watching American Gladiators in Canada. Not bad, eh?

A year ago, if you had told me I would someday live in California, I would have laughed at you. A year ago, GDB and I were still circling each other, looking for the chinks in each other’s armor where we could slip through to endeavor forward on the march of relationship being. A year ago, I had a job where I read all day, and then went to class, and while class was getting on my nerves, I loved my job. A year ago seems like a mighty long time ago.

It seems funny to me that the last few weeks have found me struggling with different things. Rebound Boy. Student loans. GDB’s reappearance and subsequent announcements. My asshat of a roommate. Missing my social life from home. Wondering if I was still funny if I never laughed anymore on this coast. Figuring out what I need to do to make school work in the fall. Working overtime and stressing that this wasn’t a job I could do forever. What did I want to do? Declarations of love. Declarations of apathy. I’ve been bending every which way I can, and yet the hits still keep coming.

I taunted fate last night. “What else can you possibly do?”

Apparently, fate always has the last laugh.

I left my office this morning at 9:30. After arriving at 8:30. In that short hour, I managed to send out a few e-mails, schedule a few meetings, and get fired.

You would think I would have better been able to control myself. But there’s only so many times you can hear, “We’re not sure if this is the right fit.” I heard it once before, with AmeriCorps when they couldn’t decide if they wanted me to do more or less, and when I tried to do what they wanted, I failed anyway. I heard it again today, when they said, “You’re fantastic and we love having you, and you’re great at all the things we didn’t hire you for, but you’re not so good when it comes to the things we did.” Meaning, I suck at copying, filing, calendaring, and other basic administrative responsibilities.

I almost laughed. Am I being fired because I have a brain and prefer using it? Maybe it’s because the one day I called out sick last week after working overtime multiple weeks in a row, they panicked and thought I didn’t order their lunches. Am I being fired over lunches? This is almost absurd.

Yet tears still clogged up in my eyes and no matter how I tried to hide them, the red around my now turquoise colored irises gave them away. I was offered tissues. I was asked, “Do you want to talk about anything?”

Is there ever anything to talk about when you get fired?

I left, after it was disclosed that I could stay home for the next two weeks and they would still pay me anyway, until May 7th. I went home. I called my parents. The first time I’ve ever been fired.

On one hand, this solves the whole roommate asshat problem.

On the other hand, what am I going to do between now and school in September?

I cried. I texted my closest friends and e-mailed the ones who could maybe show me some hope. I realized, I now have four months of nothing to kill. So I thought about it.

What if I go to Thailand? And visit my best friend who has been living there for almost a year now? (And try to convince Lisa to get her passport and meet me there?) What if I do the famed drive down the California coast line, scarf blowing and wind in my hair? What if I stay with Avocado a few days in San Diego? And visit friends in L.A.? What if I extend my trip to Seattle to include Vancouver and spend more time with Princess Pointful? What if I drive back across the country in someone else’s car, just driving to see the lands and not necessarily even the sights? I learned in Arizona that I can happily gaze at a cacti-grown landscape for an hour without a single comment, admiring the beauty of such a stark land. What if I make this the road trip I’ve always wanted to take, my laptop my only companion and my thoughts centered on the scattered white lines of the road below?

Suddenly, the paycheck seemed insignificant. My passport flaunted its empty pages, with lands I’ve always wanted to but never have been. It still stings to know I couldn’t make it work here, after everything I’ve somehow endured. But somehow, having this physical escape from the shackles of this life that I constructed here suddenly makes all the difference in the world. Calmly, rationally, I posted all my furniture on Craigslist. I put together my list of things to do before I move. I made some tentative plans for the summer, feeling my way towards some form of income.

It’s not about California or bust anymore. Admittedly, I am hesitant to try my hand in a new city, but I am reluctant to make New York my safety. She should never be anyone’s safety.

In the gears of the landing wheels of a plane, the churning of a bus’s wheels, the quiet rev of a car’s engine, I don’t expect to find any of the answers I’ve been looking for. I know things are going to remain unsteady for a long time, wish as I may it weren’t. But I will find adventure, words on lined notebook paper inspired by my journeys, temporary escape from the things that have weighed heavily on my mind, dancing wind chimes upon a Pacific breeze.

I may not be leaving for a few more weeks, California, but you showed your teeth. And somehow? I know no matter what happens, I’ll land on my feet. Slightly worse for the wear, perhaps a bit battered and bruised from all the curveballs I’ve been hit with since moving here, I’m looking forward to leaving you behind. My story is meant to continue somewhere else.

First off, I’d like to clarify one thing. There have been moments where you have made me giggle, clap my hands delightedly, and grin until my face feels like it’s going to break.I don’t doubt this will happen again someday. There are moments where I feel like I’m one of those movie moments that were someone else to view me, they’d cringe from the sappiness. There are also moments where I wake up in the mornings, completely content with where my life is at and who it’s with at the moment.

But over the last few years, I’ve learned a few things from my experiences with you. You all know how to be mighty big assholes from time to time. Even when I don’t have feelings for you or care much about you, you still know how to get right up in there and make a few tweaks that have me all up in a storm, arms flailing around, ready to pound down on anyone who dares come near, man or woman.

If you feel sorry about something, that’s one thing. If you feel as though you should apologize to smooth things over, that’s another. Why is it that you, as a gender, are so prone to apologizing for things without understanding why you’re apologizing in the first place? For example, Rebound Boy. Telling me that you didn’t really understand that wearing a condom was a part of the whole, “I don’t care if you sleep with other people since we’re not dating, but at least be safe and honest about it,” discussion does not get you out of jail free. Furthermore, contacting me to apologize and then saying, “I just didn’t want you to think I was some asshole player,” when the point is, you were? If nothing else, you’ll always remember me as the first girl who kicked you out of her bed. When you told me today, “I still can’t believe you kicked me out of bed. That’s never happened to me before,” I thought, “Get used to it kid. I’m sure I won’t be the last.”

Why bother apologizing at all? If you fucked up, and you feel bad about it, keep it to yourself. I’d rather you leave me alone and let me think of you as a jerk. Maybe in a year or two, I’ll be too focused with some other idiot who either doesn’t know how to keep it in his pants, forgets that he’s supposed to be the male and whines I don’t need him enough, the distance is too much (incidentally, an excuse Rebound Boy gave me today because South Bay is too far from East Bay? What? Talk to me after you do a Chicago-Berkeley distance) or expects me to demand a relationship from him after a week of dating. I don’t work like that gentlemen; if you want me, you need to know well enough how to hold my hand as we begin the negotiation dance so that I might just take down this wall that I have up.

I’m not going to be that girl who asks you, “Are you my boyfriend?” The very word doesn’t exist in my vocabulary for a reason. Hell, I might not even say, “What are we doing?” until about a year in, and I’ll just refer to you as my person in the meantime, and quite possibly, thereafter. You need to respect that I’m an independent fucker who will do things when I want, how I want, and if I really like you, I’ll ask you to do it with me. But I won’t rearrange my life for you, unless I think you’re damn well worth it. As of this point, only one of you has ever made it that far. Also; giving me a time line? Saying you want children by the time you’re twenty-eight, when I’ll be all of twenty-seven? My body runs in the opposite direction of a clock. Don’t bother imposing one on me.

I am a kick-ass girlfriend, when I get around to being a girlfriend. I’m also an awesome fuck buddy - as long as you’re safe, do what you want to do. Just treat me like I’m the only thing that matters when I’m around, and I’ll do the same for you. But now that my sexual health has been compromised, check it out boys. The boobs? They’re going underground. I know you’ll miss them. They’re damn fine specimens of what real breasts should look like, gentlemen.

For that matter, what part of man break did you not get, men? Why is it that when I want nothing to do with any of you, that’s when you break out the olive branches and declarations of love?

I’m tired of you all saying, “You were amazing. I had a good thing, and I don’t know why I ruined it. I fucked up. I made a mistake. You were pretty cool. [Insert variation of how awesome I am here.]” I’m tired of you saying “I know I lost a good thing when I screwed things up with you.” I’m tired of being lost, period. You know where I am boys. I was never that difficult to find in the first place.

But please. Respect my need for a break from you, without any apologies, without any desires, without any words that are guaranteed to make me go back on all the promises I made to myself and find me wanting a future that I had already said goodbye to. Please just let me make it through a day, without heated tempers or tears or words that I’m not sure I mean anymore but want to mean. Please just give me some time.

I don’t doubt that in the future, I will look forward to spending time with you again, and will admire how well I incorporate your lifestyle into my own after years of fierce independence. I love running my hands through your hair when you look at me, just after you’ve kissed me. I love how you can sometimes nuzzle your face in my shoulder and make me jump by breathing cold air on my bare skin. I love how you’ll sometimes say something so ridiculous, I can’t stop laughing and think I might fall over. I love how getting a text message from you will make me grin ridiculously, to the point where I’m not sure my face is altogether there anymore. But today? Is not that day. Until then, please. Keep your space, and I’ll keep mine.

Respectfully,

distracted spunk.

If I were a color, I’d be somewhere between citrus orange and magenta red, puffs of anger enhancing my pigmentation.

If I were a word, I’d be rivers of profanity, starting with fuck fuck fuck, fuck you you fucking motherfucker, and I never curse.

If I were a fruit, I’d be a bruised peach, from the imprints of you on me and the hardness beginning to jade my core.

If I were a grammatical mark, I’d be a comma, for all the run-on sentences due your way; question marks are unnecessary when the answers are pointless.

If I were a car, I’d be leaking fuel near the ignition, a flash yet incendiary, just a blaze still simmering under the hood.

If you were a color, you’d be putrid green, muddled and confused, wanting to jump out when you’re better off mixed in with vomit.

If you were a word, you’d connote the essence of dumbed down intelligence, a fine “huh?” to you too.

If you were a fruit, you’d be a watermelon, indecisive in your patterns, swollen with water and little else in the name of substance.

If you were a grammatical mark, you’d be an ellipses for all the things you assume without digging deeper to find, deceptiveness the key to your reality.

If you were a car, you’d be the runaway offender, uninsured and unready to play the game of truth.

I don’t usually listen to the Beatles. But today, I’m feeling positively sixties-ish. As though I’m ready to grab a sign, march around, and indulge in some free love for all. A VW mini-bus awaits outside, ready to take me to the site of the next protest, whilst I wear flowers in my hair among the braids, a billowy shirt and sandals upon my feet.

Make no note of the clouds in the sky above, for the acid trips will make things sunny and bright (or at the very least neon), and really, all those cute hippie boys with their moptop hair and V-shaped fingers and possibly some theorem spouting algorithms or science in the name of love will get my mojo flowing like no other.

Sometimes, I wish I could just wake up in another decade. Each morning would be a veritable smorgasbord as I would never know what character I could play that day. The vixen from the thirties? How about a disco girl from the seventies? I can straighten my hair with the best of them. Grunge rock? I’ve got a flannel shirt somewhere. Flapper from the 20s, bright red lipstick and a Charleston to boot. It’d make the getting ready for work process a little more difficult, but sometimes the world seems like it’d be so much more fun in a silent black and white film.

Action: Hands clapped to cheeks

Subtitle: I think my roommate found my vibrator!

Action: Swoon into a fellow’s arms

Subtitle: Did he really just bring up Occam’s Razor? In a discussion about ball pits? I am so turned on.

Action: Furrowed brows and steam puffing out of ears

Subtitle: What do my bosses think they’re doing, giving me work to do at work?!

It might just be me.

In all seriousness though, I do sometimes wonder what it is about my generation that makes me feel simultaneously apathetic and political. We’re oft-spoken about as the generation that is least interested in politics and change, but I disagree. Unfortunately, I think we’ve just been given too many options, too many things to think about and consider that it can be difficult to narrow our interests down to one. I almost think it was easier in a way when people lived during the civil rights and Vietnam era; the climate was radically changing around them that it was either move with it or be swept away. The world we live in now, at least to me, seems to be changing as easily as it is to change a shoe. We’re so used to it that I think it’s hard to be shocked.

In some ways, I think that’s why this Elliot Spitzer scandal doesn’t bother me. Or why I haven’t voted yet. I tend to prefer to wait to see what the least amount of options are, because when there are too many, it can get overwhelming. Much like I’m overwhelmed by where I should live when all is said and done (the “Where in the World Should DS live” game is great fun, incidentally), I think it becomes more difficult for us to choose our priorities. I read an article a few weeks ago about a game that was developed that showed three doors, and you could permanently close one door behind you and not access the other two for greater money, but most people chose to lose money to see what was behind those other doors. It’s a case of wanting to make sure we’re not missing out on anything, so we second guess our first instincts, and lose out where we could be succeeding.

I don’t advocate for living life with blinders. But I don’t advocate for living life with what ifs. I know that in every instance, I tried my hardest to make a relationship work, to keep a friendship going, to make a job work, to make a lifestyle work. And when I’ve had to walk away, it’s because there were no other options that would leave my relative sanity intact. I guess what I’m really feeling is that sometimes, it’s hard to remember how big of a world we live in what it seems so small, when there are so many paths to take and yet, the same people bump along whether or not we want them to join.

Maybe that’s why I feel nostalgia for an age I’ve never lived. Because they were working to create more options, being limited to what they had. Where the world wasn’t right yet, but it could be if they worked hard enough. Adversely, as a child of that generation’s plantings, all those options they strove to give us have become endlessly bountiful. I find it ironic that while their generation was searching for social change, we’re searching for fiscal change. For the ability to afford a family, an education, and a lifestyle, because while there are changes that need to be made, they’ve set the precedent that we can have anything we want.

I could just be rambling here. Perhaps I should be wondering what an eggman is, and how I can become one instead. Or how I can become part of a larger movement, one that encourages a social and fiscal revelation, making it possible for me to afford the life I want. Or maybe, just maybe, I should be wandering around, flowers in my hair, grass under my feet, dancing to the rhythm of the earth as the world moves beneath me.